Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, declared Monday the planet is “[…] burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying,” as he evoked a “dystopian future” for all unless “climate change” is addressed.
AFP reports Turk told a U.N. Human Rights Council debate on food availability that extreme weather events were wiping out crops, herds and ecosystems, challenging communities and their ability to rebuild and support themselves.
The Austrian lawyer turned U.N. official said the time has come for everyone to heed the unelected body and address the long list of concerns it sees as threatening the very existence of the planet.
His message from Geneva, Switzerland, follows a common theme of recent U.N. calls for the world to change its ways while shunning those who disagree or cast doubt on “climate science.”
“More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021. And climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century,” said Turk.
He then added an ominous vision of the future, saying “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying,” all while evoking a “dystopian future” for humanity.
Turk declared action is needed not just for today, but for the future to spare “hunger and suffering to our children, and their children. And we don’t have to.”
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, right, warmly greets U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, at the Miraflores presidential palace, in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
“We, the generation with the most powerful technological tools in history, have the capacity to change it.”
Turk said world leaders “perform the choreography of deciding to act and promising to act and then get stuck in the short term”.
He called for an end to “senseless subsidies” of the fossil fuel industry, and said the Dubai COP28 climate summit in November and December needed to be the “decisive game-changer that we so badly need,” the AFP report continued.
Turk urged the world to “shun the green-washers” as well as those who cast doubt on “climate science.”
The Human Rights Council’s 53rd session runs until July 14.